vThe first character cannot be 0 through 9 or a period (.)
vThe variable name cannot exceed 250 bytes. For names containing DBCS characters, count each
DBCS character as 2 bytes, and count the shift-out (SO) and shift-in (SI) as 1 byte each.
vSO (X'0E') and SI (X'0F') must delimit DBCS characters within a DBCS name. Also note that:
– SO and SI cannot be contiguous.
– Nesting of SO / SI is not permitted.
– A DBCS name cannot contain a DBCS blank (X'4040').
vThe variable name should not be RC, SIGL, or RESULT,which are REXX special variables. More about
special variables appears later in this book.
Examples of acceptable variable names are:
ANSWER ?98B A Word3 number the_ultimate_value
Also, if OPTIONS ETMODE is the first instruction in your program, the following are valid DBCS variable
names, where < represents shift-out, > represents shift-in, X,Y, and Zrepresent DBCS characters, and
lowercase letters and numbers represent themselves.
<.X.Y.Z> number_<.X.Y.Z> <.X.Y>1234<.Z>
Variable Values
The value of the variable, which is the value the variable name represents, might be categorized as
follows:
vAconstant, which is a number that is expressed as:
An integer (12)
A decimal (12.5)
A floating point number (1.25E2)
A signed number (-12)
A string constant (' 12')
vAstring, which is one or more words that may or may not be within quotation marks, such as:
This value can be a string.
'This value is a literal string.'
vThe value from another variable, such as:
variable1 = variable2
In the preceding example, variable1 changes to the value of variable2, but variable2 remains the same.
vAn expression, which is something that needs to be calculated, such as:
variable2 = 12 + 12 - .6 /* variable2 becomes 23.4 */
Before a variable is assigned a value, its value is the value of its own name translated to uppercase. For
example, if the variable new has not been assigned a value, then
SAY new
produces
NEW

Exercises - Identifying Valid Variable Names

Which of the following are valid REXX variable names?
1. 8eight
2. £25.00
3. MixedCase
4. nine_to_five
5. result
Using Variables and Expressions
20 CICS TS for VSE/ESA: REXX Guide